First Aid Interview

June 04, 2017

We interviewed First Aid a music producer from South Korea. His style is musical but diverse and has ranged from working with singers on the Room 606 project, to his Back to the Innermind Drum and Bass release on Noisy Meditation and all points in between.

How did you first get into music?

Around 2000, I remember was the golden era of the original BEMANI music. For those that don’t know this is a term for Konami’s rhythm action games. I was totally hooked on the sounds of that era. As a normal teenager, I didn’t know about that many diverse genres of music at that time but now I know there were so many possibilities of music – from soft J-Pop to hard techno/gabber. This was the time when I started to absorb the joy of auditory diversity. From age 3 to 12 I played the piano, all the classical masterpieces. Then I got FL Studio which was like the beginning of long, hard journey. (Now I’m Ableton Live guy, btw.)

How would you describe your sound?

Amalgamation. Reconstruction. Assemblage.

When I work on the structure of a music piece, mostly I verbalize my fundamental concept, as a means to change the abstract idea in my mind into a vivid method. To be more specific, I select a specific music genre to work on and extract some concepts and methods, and then individualize them. Through this process, I can get fragments of music. Like modules, or Lego bricks. The next process is to construct new structures that I personally like.

Tell us about the music scene in South Korea.

So, thanks to the era we now live in, young and old, from Seoul to Busan, everyone has the possibility of getting the information and tools for making music.

If I compare now and 5 years ago, I see that South Korean musicians are aware of global music trends, while at the same time, making their “own” sounds.

We can share our works online. While we may be scattered as individuals we are gradually gathering into one big community.

I am having really nice, warm “relationships” with two great label, Noisy Meditation founded in Baltimore as you mentioned, (Soundcloud had been uniting musicians all over the world through message function and groups, you know.) and YOUNG,GIFTED&WACK in Korea.

Are there any other South Korean labels and artists we should check out?